Spaghetti Builds Strong Bridges

Almost three dozen Johns Hopkins Engineering students
learned about the power of pasta this month by assembling bridges
made solely by gluing strands of spaghetti together. The
structures, put together by teams of two to three students,
competed in the sixth annual Spaghetti Bridge Contest at the
Maryland Science Center.

Seth Tibbitts works on his
team's prize-winning Calamari Crossing.

The students--all freshmen enrolled in the What Is
Engineering? course--had to follow strict rules governing the
size, weight and design of the model bridges. The winning bridge
was the one that supported the greatest amount of weight without
snapping.

This year's winning bridge, called Calamari Crossing, held
41.4 kilograms or about 91 pounds before it broke. The students
who built it were Yquem Roman of Monroe Township, N.J., Ryan
Sutton of Winchester, Mass., and Seth Tibbitts of Syracuse,
N.Y.

The instructor for the class, Michael Karweit, a research
professor in the Department of Chemical
Engineering, said he was impressed by the entire class's work
because this was the first year in the contest's history that all
student bridges held at least 10 kilograms or 22 pounds.